A reader of the New York Times put his finger on it. "Does he ever sweat?" he asked of President Obama. "We're in desperate times and I don't see a man who is really affected by it. We need a committed, passionate person to lead a country – not a Sunday school teacher." Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist on whose blog this comment appeared, agreed: "It's time for Mr Obama to sweat like a racehorse."

Obama is clearly aware of this. A day after his "shellacking" (as he quaintly called his humiliation at the polls) he admitted he sometimes got stuck "in the bubble" of the White House and lost touch with ordinary Americans. But he was no cold fish, he implied. The letters he received each day from the bereaved families of American servicemen "just break my heart, but nobody's filming me reading those letters".

But what would a camera have shown if he had been filmed? Sobs and tears like those of the soon-to-be speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican John Boehner, who said in his victory speech he had "spent my whole life chasing the American dream"? Obama is not one to parade his emotions. His rhetoric during his election campaign was inspiring, with its promise of "change", but it wasn't about himself and his own feelings. The British might admire a leader for that kind of reserve, but Americans seem to need one they can snuggle up to.

His other problem, of course, is that he doesn't seem to have delivered "change". American politicians of all persuasions always promise "change", but Obama did so more convincingly than most, in part because, as the first black man to run for the presidency, he seemed to be the embodiment of it. But, in the sense that most Americans appear to understand this vague concept – a government not of Washington insiders stitching up deals but a "government of the people, by the people, for the people" – Obama admitted failure. "We were in such a hurry to get things done, we didn't change how things were done," he said. And such are the day-to-day demands on the presidency that it is hard to imagine how he, or any other president, ever will.

While confessing to personal failings, Obama still places most of the blame for his "shellacking" on the slowness of America's economic recovery. Let's hope his analysis is right, for it's very hard to imagine him sweating.

The great poppy debate

Jon Snow of Channel 4 News is a victim of the same kind of criticism. His stand against wearing a poppy on television is taken as a sign of uncaringness. He says that, on the contrary, he does care about the sacrifices made by our soldiers in defence of freedom and that he always wears a poppy in private, but that he has a rule against wearing any kind of symbol on screen and that he refuses to be browbeaten by "poppy fascism".

Actually, he has not been completely consistent in his stand. Last year I happened to turn on the television on Remembrance Day to see that Snow was wearing a poppy on his lapel. But the view that he is some kind of unpatriotic "lefty" remains prevalent in the rightwing press, and the Daily Mail yesterday wheeled on Lord Hattersley to show that, even among lefties, he is a bit of an outcast. "Jon Snow ought to be wearing, indeed flaunting, a poppy in order to advertise the best of good causes," wrote the former deputy leader of the Labour party. Snow, he said, had "no doubt unwittingly" encouraged the belief that wearing a poppy was a sign of dull conformity, whereas really it was a badge of pride.

If I were Jon Snow, I think I would wear a poppy on television, if only to end this tedious controversy. But he has a perfect right not to wear one; and it's difficult to see how it matters, except for the effect it has on his public image, which is entirely his own problem. What I find more disturbing is the fact that everyone on BBC television wears one, from the performers on Strictly Come Dancing to the most remote of foreign correspondents. Are they under instructions to do so? Does the cash-strapped corporation fly out poppies to every corner of the globe? There is certainly a feeling of compulsion here, and it would be very interesting to know how Snow would be treated if he stood by his principle were he an employee of the BBC.

Rooney's baptism of fire

Today is Guy Fawkes Day, and Wayne Rooney is to be burnt in effigy at Edenbridge in Kent. The Edenbridge Bonfire Society is in the habit of burning modern celebrities in place of the poor old Roman Catholic conspirator in the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605. I support it in its efforts to make Guy Fawkes Day seem "relevant" to people today. Guy Fawkes has been burned often enough in the last 400 years, and though he did indeed want to blow up King James I and his parliament, it was at least out of principle. Wayne Rooney, though a fine footballer, has become a symbol of greed and self-indulgence, and as such he seems a perfectly appropriate object of popular denigration.